Is all the bad press Vista has gotten really just the placebo effect? Is it really that bad? Microsoft shows off their “New OS” “Mojave” to people who have not used Vista but have some negative thoughts or feelings about it to see if it indeed is the negative press that gives Vista a bad rap. I think this shows Microsoft’s ingenuity to work out a problem that might just be a bad PR problem with Vista, it also goes to show that stuffy old Microsoft can “think out of the box”.

Microsoft has said they will not extend the cut-off deadline for it’s OEM distribution of XP, witch is set for June 30, 2008. After that date you will no longer be able to buy a new computer with XP pre-installed. They did say however they will extend support for it (updates and such) until 2014.

M$ admitted that UAC prompts needs work, the fact that most of these prompts are confusing to users and downright annoying. I remember back in beta 1 when I first noticed the UAC prompts I quickly found out how to disable this “feature” as I myself was quite annoyed by them.

“Clearly there is work that has to be done around the UAC prompts — in part because of user feedback that they get the prompts at times they don’t necessarily expect them and it is not intuitive.

“If you give people too many prompts in too many situations, they view it as an impediment to getting their work done and they just start clicking ok on everything,” said Charney. He said that the language used in prompts is also confusing.

“We give them dialogues and prompts that don’t help them make the right decision as often as we would like. You can be surfing the Web and get a warning that this site is out of another site’s control, or you may be passing data to another site. What is a user supposed to do with that information?

Today Microsoft finely releases more “Ultimate Extras”. Included are two new sound schemes: “Pearl” and “Glass” as well as a new content pack for DreamScene.

It was looking very bleak for the Ultimate Extras program for a while due to Microsoft’s uncertainty of the life of the program, maybe this is a sign of whats to come for the future of it. I sure am looking froward to what else they have in store for us Ultimate users (if anything).

Right now the burning question is to Microsoft: “When you going to finely release XP service pack 3?” Is Microsoft’s delaying SP3 in hopes of more people adopting Vista over XP? This could very well be a delay tactic on the part of MS to get those people and businesses that have yet to make the jump to Vista to do so, as MS releases yet another XPSP3 RC2 refresh.